Question

I want my ActiveRecord class User to contain options (a bunch of string key-values), so I wrote:

rails generate migration AddOptionsToUser options:Hash

It generated:

class AddOptionsToUser < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :users, :options, :Hash
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :users, :options
  end
end

I also added this line to my class User:

serialize :options, Hash

But the migration fails:

Mysql2::Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'Hash' at line 1: ALTER TABLE `users` ADD `options` Hash

I am new to Rails, what is the usual way to store a bunch of string key-values in an ActiveRecord class?

Answer 1

To have ruby object as an attribute of the ActiveRecord model you should use serialize method inside your class for that attribute link